By Tobias Burg
THE PRIME MINISTER of Saxony Count Heinrich von Brühl (1700–63; Fig.15) who, after Augustus III, was the decisive political figure at the court of the Saxon elector and Polish king, has had an almost exclusively bad press ever since his death. He was considered partly, if not wholly, responsible for ruining Saxony’s state finances, not least because of shameless embezzlement. A pamphlet of 1927, for instance, summarises the low opinion in which he is still held: ‘From the very start, Brühl’s career was marked by the most unbridled and fanatical egotism. His natural abilities – hypocritical agility and dishonest obsequiousness – served a single purpose: that of filling his pockets with state property’. Such an assessment, however, is based on an opinion of Brühl’s actions formed immediately after his death – at a moment where there was a need for a scapegoat to explain the many and multifarious reasons why, in 1763, at the end of the Seven Years’ War, Saxony was politically and economically devastated. Brühl’s historical role has yet to be objectively assessed – and the granting of access to the extensive archive material on eighteenth-century Saxon politics, primarily stored at the Saxon Main State Archive in Dresden, represents a first important step in this direction.
